Software forms the basis of the American economy. Today, nearly every consumer experience, from ATM transactions to buying and trading stocks online to moving money through checking and savings accounts, relies on millions of lines of code built, run and maintained by software developers.Currently, many Wall Street institutions still operate with vulnerable code It was written more than half a century ago during the Eisenhower era. Despite the best efforts of financial institutions to modernize their code bases, we are now at an inflection point that could disrupt the digital economy as we know it. However, artificial intelligence may be the solution.
Common Business Oriented Language (COBOL) was first created in 1959. Prior to today’s strict regulatory environment, financial institutions were leading the way as early adopters of the new technology, using COBOL in applications deployed on mainframe computers. Now, more than half a century later, COBOL remains the digital foundation for more than 43% of financial institutions. COBOL handles $3 trillion in daily commerce, 95% of ATM card swipes, and our checking and savings accounts. In its heyday, COBOL enabled Wall Street to innovate, but as payment processors like Stripe, Paypal, and Adyen have become the new normal, COBOL hinders the modernization of our banking institutions and poses an imminent security threat.
In an era of well-funded and sophisticated cyber espionage, code produced before Beatlemania could collapse a system like a house of cards. Security threats and vulnerabilities surge 25% More specifically, COBOL is vulnerable to a type of attack known as SQL injection, a destructive data attack that has compromised millions of credit card and data transactions, crashed commercial websites, Health records of nearly all Estonian citizens leaked. With financial institutions’ mainframes still running on COBOL, these threats could wipe out trillions of dollars in economic value, seriously affecting the financial stability of ordinary people.
Furthermore, developers who really know how to maintain legacy code are The workforce is aging rapidly. We’re racing against time to modernize COBOL before the talent pool shrinks.This process is not quick and may require It will take several years, if not ten years, to complete. With generative AI, the speed and cost of this transformation can be radically reduced, thereby strengthening the foundation of our digital economy.
Over the past year, generative AI pair programming tools have changed the nature of software development, becoming one of the first examples of artificial intelligence joining the workforce in the world. AI-powered developer tools already complete nearly 50% of code for developers, allowing them to half the time. In the next few years, as artificial intelligence Set to power the entire cycle of computer programming, these productivity gains can quickly rise from 55% to 1000%. Today, artificial intelligence can interpret the entire mainframe code base and perform up to 80% of the coding and manual tasks developers need to complete the transition from COBOL to modern software such as Java or Golang. As AI continues to acquire context and capabilities in the coming years, its capabilities will only increase.
crucially financial services institution– and anyone still using COBOL and similar outdated legacy software – to empower their developers with the power of artificial intelligence. Our society now relies on increased developer productivity, their ability to understand these aging programming languages, and skillfully transform aging code into safer, more agile code bases. As organizations embrace the collision of artificial intelligence and software, we can transform the entire digital backbone of our economy in quarters rather than decades, and prevent trillions in economic activity from being compromised in the process.
Clearly, Wall Street’s next crisis may be digital. However, with the help of artificial intelligence, we have a chance to avoid another financial crisis that has been brewing for a long time.
Thomas Dohmke is the CEO of GitHub.
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